Forex news for Asia trading on Monday 21 June 2021

It was an active opening to the week with follow through moves from the US equity market drop on Friday hitting Japanese stocks particularly hard. At the Tokyo lunch break:

  • Nikkei is down 3.4%
  • TOPIX is down 2.5%

As I post there is so far no sign of the Bank of Japan buying (TOPIX) ETFs. They last bought back on April 21.

The risk-off move ... well it wasn't a risk-off move at all. AUD and NZD both moved substantially higher (for an Asian range day) with AUD/USD up around 40 points from its lows while NZD/USD up a similar amount circa +40 points. Fresh news and data were light only.

EUR didn't do too much, yen and GBP added on a few points against the big dollar. Oil traded higher still, CAD added a few points. .

US yields dropped during the Asian session here, the 10 year and 30 year USTs to lows not seen since early March and February respectively. Dropping yields gave gold a bit of a spark, up a little more than 10USD from its low.

The People's Bank of China set its one- and five- year loan prime rates at unchanged levels for the 14th month in a row.

Bitcoin had an active weekend, dropping under $33,500 at one stage before staging a solid rally back above $36K. Its circa $35K as I update though. Chinese tightening of regulation of mining and transactions continues to ratchet higher (see bullets above).

Gold eked out a small bounce:

Forex news for Asia trading onMonday21June 2021

And, something the equity longs may not be too happy about. Bullard is speaking again today during the US session. Bullard is head of the Atlanta Fed, on Friday his comments sent US stocks tumbling. NY Fed head Williams speaks also.